Interview with Professor Jindong Yuan and Professor Hugh White

Jindong Yuan Associate Professor of Government and International Relations at Sydney University and Hugh White Professor of Strategic Studies and Head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the ANU discuss what the disagreement over China's declaration of an 'Air Defence Zone' means for Australia's relations with Beijing and the potential for a wider conflict involving China, the US and Japan

Transcript

SCOTT BEVAN, PRESENTER: Our top story is the rising tensions over China's declaration of an air defence zone above the East China Sea. Japan has declared the zone invalid as it takes in islands under Japanese control, and tonight there's news that South Korea, as well as Japan, have flown military aircraft through the zone in defiance of Beijing.

Well to explore the potential for a wider conflict involving China, its neighbours and the US and for Australia's relations with Beijing, I'm joined now from our Canberra studio by Hugh White, head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at the ANU. and in our Sydney studio is Jindong Yuan, Associate Professor of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney.

Gentlemen, thank you and welcome to you both.

HUGH WHITE, STRATEGIC STUDIES, ANU: Nice to be with you.

SCOTT BEVAN: Jindong Yuan, what is it about these islands that arouses so much territorial passions and tensions?

JINDONG YUAN, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, SYDNEY UNI.: Well, I think this is part of China's legacy, 100 years of humiliation. Now China has become number two great power in the world, so this is unfinished business. If you recall, President Xi Jinping is calling for a China dream, so one of the idea is to reclaim China's sovereign control over Diaoyu and Senkaku, so this is very sentimental for China.

SCOTT BEVAN: Hugh White, why would China potentially ramp up this dispute though with this declaration of this air defence zone and why now?

HUGH WHITE: Well I think one of the reasons for that is not just the very important sort of emotional issues, as Jindong's mentioned, but also the fact that these islands have become, if you like, a token or symbol of a much bigger agenda and that is the question about how does the region accommodate China's growing power? In particular, how does the United States respond to China's desire for a bigger role in the region. And from China's point of view, I think understandably, they fear that the United States is resisting China's ambitions to play a bigger role in the region as its power grows and they feel they need to do this kind of admittedly stark and destabilising gesture in order, so to speak, to get America's attention. America is refusing to make space for China. In fact they're resisting that idea very strongly and so China feels it has to do this kind of thing to get America's attention. One can understand that, but one can still stay say it's a very dangerous thing to do because the the risk is the United States, as we've started to see happen over the last couple of days, pushes back in turn and we end up in an escalating cycle of rivalry and confrontation, which, if something goes wrong, and it could, could well produce a real conflict.

SCOTT BEVAN: Hugh White, as - Jindong Yuan, as Hugh White was mentioning there, the US has pushed back. It's sent two B-52 bombers into the zone. We've heard about Japan and South Korea doing likewise with military aircraft. If this continues, where countries defy and ignore the existence of this zone, how is Beijing likely to respond? How does it control this zone that it's trying to impose?

JINDONG YUAN: Right. I think China has - when it declared this ADIZ, it listed a number of options. So China's pretty much can argue and that it can pick one option over the other. We should remember that ADIZ, if the plane - if they don't identify themselves, but they fly sort of parallel instead of toward Chinese air space, and then the Chinese authority can always find justification in saying, "We're monitoring the situation and we know we have total control of our air space."

SCOTT BEVAN: Hugh White, does- given that the Foreign Ministry has talked about having effective control and confident they can maintain effective control over this zone, what does effective control mean?

HUGH WHITE: Well, I think that does raise some very big questions because the original announcement last week of this over the weekend of this zone did talk about the Chinese authorities taking emergency defensive measures if countries didn't conform to what the Chinese were asking them. That certainly sounded as if it was going to be military responses. So the fact that the Chinese have allowed these B-52s to transit the zone, and apparently, from the reports we've seen, these Korean and Japanese aircraft to transit the zone without those kinds of responses does suggest that China's bluff has been called. On the other hand, I think we shouldn't necessarily assume we've seen the last move in this game. For example, China could start doing the same thing into American air defence information zones around Guam, for example, and challenge the United States to allow China to do in their zones what America's doing in China's. Now this all starts sounding very tit-for-tat, but that's the kind of escalation that can produce the escalating tensions and rivals that could lead to a conflict. So I think there's quite lot of danger inherent in this situation yet.

SCOTT BEVAN: Jindong Yuan, does it seem at this stage like Beijing has made a miscalculation here with the imposition of this zone?

JINDONG YUAN: Well, I think as the events have evolved, there is - probably a lot of people would think that China maybe overplay its hand. But I think this is one of the steps over a long - sort of longer-term strategy. Now China wants to justify and create a routine, an administration of what it considers to be its national sovereignty air space, so this is only the first of a series of steps that China has planned.

SCOTT BEVAN: Ever-escalating steps though?

JINDONG YUAN: Yeah, I think so. I think next time the US fly over or Japanese or South Korean, there could be a scrambling of fighter aircraft escort, there could be warnings, there could be a number of options. But I think Beijing is quite clear that it doesn't want to escalate to the extent that actually China and Japan, South Korea and the United States get into a military conflict. In 2001, there's EP3 incident, and so I think China will try to avoid that, but at the same time make a very strong statement and posture, "This is our air space."

SCOTT BEVAN: Well Australia, Hugh White, has become a part of all of this latest episode. China has taken exception to the Foreign Minister Julie Bishop's remarks about the imposition of this air defence zone - critical remarks. And a Chinese Foreign spokesman has urged Australia to correct its mistake to prevent damaging Sino-Australian relations. Is there indeed any mistake needing to be corrected here?

HUGH WHITE: Well, I think the Chinese Foreign Ministry was trying to make clear they were pretty irritated by what Julie Bishop had said and they were certainly trying to convey that message. I think it was perfectly reasonable for Australia to raise some concerns about this gesture, because although, as I said, I do think there is a big background question about how we respond to China's growing power, I don't think there's much doubt that this particular move by China is a risky and potentially destabilising one. I think it was legitimate for the Australian Government to raise those concerns. On the other hand, I also think it's naive of the Australian Government to be surprised by the fact that the Chinese are very irritated by that, particularly when you put it in a context of the kind of approach the Abbott Government has taken since it won office on the broader question. It's been very overtly pro Japan, it's been very, very keen to swing America's way. It's tried to tell us all that they can swing Japan's way and America's way without swinging away from China and I think the Chinese are just in a process of informing the Abbott Government that that's not true, that they can't swing Japan's way without it affecting the relationship with China and I think they're trying to educate the Abbott Government into the costs that the Government - that our government will pay if they take on the Chinese in this way.

SCOTT BEVAN: Well in your book that was published last year, The China Choice, right from the get-go, the very first words, you say, "Australia's future depends on America and China." Now with incidents like these, how more precarious does the tightrope walk come for Australia with Beijing on one side, Washington on the other?

HUGH WHITE: That is the great question about Australia's future, because Australian governments, Labor and Coalition, keep on saying, "We don't want to choose between the US and China," and they're absolutely right about that. But whether we have to choose, whether we're compelled to make a choice, depends on what happens in the US-China relationship. And the kind of events we're talking about here, the imposition of this zone, is exactly the kind of escalating rivalry between the US and China which does compel us to make a choice, and that's really what the Chinese response tells us. What the Chinese are telling us is, "If you side with the United States and Japan on an issue like this, it will damage your relationship with us and we will be expecting you to pull back from that." And I think it'll be very tough for the Abbott Government not to find ways to step back gently and not too overtly from the kind of upfront position they've taken on these issues since they took office.

SCOTT BEVAN: Jindong Yuan, further to what Hugh White has said there and to what the Foreign Ministry spokesman said in Beijing about the potential to damage Sino-Australian relations, how could that relationship be damaged, particularly with that free trade agreement in mind?

JINDONG YUAN: I think it's more of making a statement, just letting Australia know that China's irritated by Australia's statement.

SCOTT BEVAN: So just words? There won't be actual action taken?

JINDONG YUAN: Well, I don't think there will be significant specific actions in retaliation against the statement. I think the way that Australia presented to China is quite different. In the US, the Secretary of State and Defence Secretary, they made statement rebutting Chinese ADIZ, but Australian Foreign Minister called in the Chinese ambassador to make representation, so that's quite a different way of conveying Australia's displeasure with China's announcement.

SCOTT BEVAN: Hugh White, in terms of looking at the region and the statement, as you referred to before, about our ties to Japan, to Tokyo, how would Beijing be reading that at this stage and how to react to the Abbott Government about that?

HUGH WHITE: Well I think that is a pretty significant factor in all of this. One of the very distinctive things about the way Tony Abbott and Julie Bishop have taken over the management of Australian foreign policy is that they've very distinctly ramped up our - the warmth of their language about Japan. Of course Australia's always had a very strong relationship with Japan, that's nothing new. But for Tony Abbott to say and Julie Bishop to say that Japan is our best friend in Asia at a time when Japan-China relationships are as tense as they have been for the last few months is inevitably very provocative towards China. And I think one of the problems is that both Abbott and Bishop have laughed that off and said, "Oh, look, we can do whatever we like with Japan without it affecting our relationships with China." And I think the Chinese are in the process of telling us, "No, that's not true." And I think as Jindong said, the profile of our action, calling in the ambassador, is quite a heavy-duty piece of diplomacy and Australia has, as far as I can see, made by far and away the strongest statement on this issue of any country not directly involved. The US, Japan, Korea are all directly involved on the spot. The Japanese - the Chinese look at us and say, "We're a long way away. Why are we pushing so hard on this?" And they see this very much as Australia aligning itself with Japan and the United States against China and that's something that they're very allergic to.

SCOTT BEVAN: Jindong Yuan, how provocative do you believe that statement of Prime Minister Abbott that Japan is Australia's best friend in Asia will be to Beijing?

JINDONG YUAN: Well I think China certainly does not understand why that statement need to be made. Remember, Howard went to Japan, 2007, and Japan, Australia signed security cooperation. At that time, Prime Minister Abe wanted to develop this quadrilateral - sort of the quad: India, United States, Japan, Australia. Australia at the time very deliberately, very pragmatically saying, "No, we don't want to be in this and certainly we don't want this to be aimed at China." So I think China understands that Australia and Japan are close allies, good relationship, but Australia does not need to posture in the way that basically takes away its options for any futures or mediation role a neutral position.

SCOTT BEVAN: Finally, Hugh White, and briefly, just before Professor Yuan said he doubted this would escalate into conflict, but how great are the possibilities, the threat that something could happen within this zone if countries are defying China's order here?

HUGH WHITE: Well, it's a really key question. It's not as though it's a certainty by any stretch of the imagination, but the consequences, even of a relatively minor skirmish, between Japan and China drawing in the United States, would be so devastating, that even though it's, say, a 10 per cent chance over the next few months that this escalates into a real clash - and I think it could be that high - that's a very serious situation. This really does challenge the stability of the whole Asia Pacific region in a way that nothing we've seen since the end of the Vietnam War does. So I think we do have to take this situation very seriously and our diplomacy needs to be more a lot more subtle and agile than we've seen from the Government so far.